Contention

Neil Lund

2024-08-29

What is contentious politics?

  • Coordinated claims-making that impinges on someone else’s interest

  • Must be:

    • Collective

    • Deliberate

    • Political (involves government even if indirectly)

    • At least some non-institutional component

What isn’t contentious politics?

Defining the scope

  • Originates with research on protests and social movements…but!

  • Social movements are considered one tool in the contentious repertoire

Putting social movements in their place

  • What is a social movement?

    • Sustained campaigns

    • Public claims-making that challenges authorities

    • Displays of worthiness, unity, numbers and commitment (WUNC)

    • Sustained by existing networks and organizations

  • Where do they start? (according to Tilly: Europe in the late 1700s)

Social movements as historically contingent

Satirical depiction of "rough music" tradition in the 1600s. Image shows a rowdy crowd gathered outside the home of a tailor, various effigies and symbols imply that his wife is accused of cuckoldry.

Hudibras Encounters the Skimmington (engraving by William Hogarth)

Social movements as historically contingent

Contentious politics is universal but:

  • Older forms were parochial, avoided direct challenge to authority, made non-systemic demands, and worked by direct influence (public humiliation, destruction of property, physical pain)

  • They’re tied to the emergence of liberal democracy, industrialization and capitalism, and the emergence of nation states.

  • They don’t happen everywhere, and they might eventually become as archaic as chivaree

Contentious Repertoires

  • Social movements, strikes, riots, terrorism, revolutions etc. are all part of a repertoire of contention

  • They share some causes and fundamental problems (maybe even have the same actors) and so we should study them together

Major problems and themes

Collective Action Problem(s)

  • Olson: the demand for collective action will generally exceed the supply

    • Contentious actors face a Free-Rider problem (why?)

    • Overcoming it typically requires organization and resources

Contentious Interaction

  • Contentious politics involves groups with disparate interests

  • Contentious politics takes place in a social/political/economic context

  • Contentious politics involves government

Identities, interests and frames

  • Collective action requires a shared identity

  • Even if we can solve the free rider problem, we need to agree on what to do, who we are, who we represent, and who we oppose

Temporal and spatial patterns

Contention takes place over time, and often occurs in waves and cycles:

Map of the Revolutions of 1848

Research Methods

  • Some similarities in research methods across fields:

    • Event catalogs

    • Organizational ecology, network analysis

    • Surveys and individual biographies

    • Process tracing, comparative methods

Next week: where does collective action come from?

  • Why do [people] rebel?

    • What kinds of conditions cause people to engage in contentious politics?

    • Are crowds “mad” or is collective action rational?